Together We Cry
by lenceilin
Summary: He knew he could snarl the other Weevil into submission. Angsty reflections. Set between 'Dead Man Walking' and 'A Day In The Death'.


**Title:** Together We Cry (borrowed from The Script's song)

**Fandom:** Torchwood

**Characters:** Owen Harper, 'Janet' the Weevil

**Rating: **T

**Summary:** He knew he could snarl the other Weevil into submission. Angsty reflections. Set between 'Dead Man Walking' and 'A Day In The Death'.

**Disclaimer**: Don't own it.

---

_There comes a time when every bird has to fly_

_At some point, every rose has to die_

_It's hard to let your children go, leave home, where they go, who knows?_

_Getting drunk, getting stoned, all alone_

_Teach a man to fish, feed a man for life_

_Show your kids a truth, and hope they never lie_

_Instead of reading in a letter - that they gone to something better -_

_Bet you're sorry now, I won't be coming home tonight_

_I'm sick of looking for those heroes in the sky - to teach us how to fly -_

_Together we cry_

_We cry, we cry - _

---

He first goes down there because the cells are nasty shadowed things, and it is frankly ridiculous to be twenty-seven years old and afraid of the dark.

Filling the sleepless nights with more Weevil research got too disturbing. He'll carry on tomorrow, just... not today. Owen's been trying to link their psychic powers to documented human incidents, and in turn to his link with the creatures. He's not sure - but he thinks it's some kind of empathic bond.

He's always been able to empathise with Weevils, but only after cage-fighting one did he realise that there was a real, actual bond. And he put himself through every test he could think of, trying to work out just what is _wrong_ with him, but nothing shows up. He wonders gloomily if they chose him as King of the Weevils, and if so, when he's supposed to feel happy about it.

Still looking for answers, he's got used to the occasional mental-nudge and the way his emotions seem to strengthen as his pack - he thinks of the Weevils in Cardiff like that instinctively - feel them, and can't help but add their own.

Then he died and the bond got very much stronger. After his fist-fight with Death, the heightened awareness he had of 'Janet' and the other Weevils stuck around. He began to attempt to comfort them at their worst and provide grim sympathy when there was no comfort to be found.

And they feel him.

Owen yells and throws coffee mugs. Janet roars and hurls herself at the cell wall.

Another day and Owen fumes with silent jealousy as his colleagues eat pizza. Janet paces a hole in the floor.

He crows with cheerful triumph when he can still beat Gwen at basketball. She just rests her hands on the transparent wall, occasionally lifting her voice in whimpering song.

One night it all gets too much and Owen breaks down in Jack's arms. Janet whistles an eerie, piping lament, and cowers in the corner of her cell.

He's done a clinical analysis. They certainly feel each other's pain. They keen and cry and whistle mournful songs when another Weevil is killed.

Unable to leave her suffering, unnerved by the very idea that he's connected to these creatures he goes to the cells to try and calm her down. The whole thing says some pretty awful things about his biology - not to mention his humanity.

She whimpers and cowers away from him.

He did an emotional analysis, too. It makes him feel even worse. He'll sit by the cell for hours, deliberately letting his mind fall wide open, refusing to let the swirling storm of growls and heartbeat-thuds and white-spiked anger coming and gone before he has a chance to scream for them, and wanting - _needing _to assert himself, to find his place in the pack. Phantom tears trickling down his cheeks, he'll listen to the requiem as another Weevil bleeds out in the gutter, knowing that he has to share a part of the pain, as he would if a member of his human family - Tosh or the Teaboy or bloody Gwen - got hurt.

He cries for his own loss. Pain curls over his smashed heart, twisting it with icy skeletal fingers, carving chunks of it out and into oblivion. He wants to scream that it can't, it mustn't. He didn't have enough left before he died.

Instinctively, he knows that it's worse for the actual Weevils. They're all lost, too, but at least Owen isn't trapped in a cell on a foreign world being experimented on. He usually gets angry at that point, furious with himself for doing so and at Jack for letting him be so... barbaric, but isn't that what Torchwood does, really? If the Weevils weren't dangerous, they wouldn't need to be in the cells, and if they acted human, they wouldn't need to be experimented on to see just how dangerous they are.

It's a vicious circle of argument. It never ends.

The bond isn't an ability he gained from fighting Death, either. Back in that cage fight he had _felt_ the hot rush of complete and total _peace _flow through his veins. He knew he could snarl the other Weevil into submission. A Weevil family depends on all being strong, depending on each other, proving yourself constantly, consistently, and don't ask him how he knows that.

_Marvellous. I'm psychic, but I can only get reception off a bloody Weevil._

He really hopes Janet didn't feel that thought.

Owen's human. But he has acted like a Weevil. He threatened to stab Ed Morgan, the murderer and rapist. One jerk of his hand and he could have become like him, a _killer,_ and as for the other - if he could go back and never sneak that alien pheromone spray from the Archives, he would - honestly. Deep down, he does know that rape is about power and control and _not_ just wanting an easy shag; and the spray itself only emphasised the attraction his partners had already felt, and he never would have forced anyone.

Never.

Still isn't something a good man would ever have considered.

Screwed up into a ball, Owen drops his head into his hands. Hands he can't really feel. Can't feel the cold stone of the floor grinding against his bony form. Maybe this is his penance? Numb to the best kind of feelings, and as Janet keens and whistles a banshee lament on the other side of the wall, he hears the cog door roll open for another _bloody_ day. Picking up the pain in both hands, he retrieves it from the sharp corners of his self-inflicted confinement - but what else is there to do? - and shoves it down deep inside.

Janet watches him from inside those haunted eyes. He scrubs roughly at the tears that should have fallen, blotting his eyes with the heel of his hand.

Then the Weevil does the same. Only, she is actually, genuinely crying. Tears glisten on her wrinkled cheeks, drips on her boiler suit.

_Even a __**Weevil **__can cry better than me!_

He slams a fist into the toughened glass and Janet shrieks, whimpers, shuffles back into the darkest corner of the cell.

Beat. "I can't do this, love," he says, calmly.

Janet sobs.

"I can't fix you. I want to. I can't even fix myself, Jan."

It says ridiculously bad things about his mental state that he feels more comfortable confessing to a Weevil than to his teammates. The keening echoes through his aching mind, and he sinks down cross-legged, not really caring if whoever else is in the Hub decides to walk in on them. Maybe they can fix the Weevil and the zombie. But he doubts it.

Resting his forehead against the _numb_ cell, he watches Janet do the same and there's a wry grin from both being so broken that it's not only not even funny, it's absolutely bloody hysterical.

Then Jack comes in and finds them, and the moment's gone. He doesn't bother to explain. Jack Immortal Harkness won't understand. Refusing his hand to get up off the floor, he doesn't look back. Doesn't need to. He'll be here again tomorrow night.

He aches with a sense of loss for something he hadn't quite found yet. Now, he supposes, he never will.

FINIS

Any concrit, people?


End file.
